


Peach

by Ashling



Category: Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Genre: F/F, Food, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon, Romantic Comedy, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:55:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23232043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: Good times with the girls.
Relationships: Astrid Leong/Goh Peik Lin, Rachel Chu & Goh Peik Lin
Comments: 15
Kudos: 51
Collections: All The Nice Things Flash Exchange 2020





	Peach

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tuesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/gifts).



The coast was almost clear. Tipsy women (and a few Definitely Drunk ones) had all piled into their cars and been driven off. This being Astrid's Happy Divorce Party (or like, a _soiree_ at Astrid's new house that coincidentally fell on the same day that she signed her divorce papers, whatever), each woman had gone off with a tasteful cream-colored gift bag and each driver had gone off with a gift bag to match, plus a red box of late-night snack food. But, as always, there was still a lot of leftovers, and Rachel, ever her mother’s daughter, was diligently Tupperware-ing it all while Astrid cleaned up empty glasses from outside. It was a totally different after-party vibe than what Peik Lin was used to from Astrid, but she kind of liked it. It was more relaxed without maids slipping in and out like impossibly tidy ghosts, making the mess disappear like magic. It gave Peik Lin an opportunity to fit in just a few more bites, and it also gave her an opportunity to get alone with Astrid, so, like, she was living the dream, right there.

She sidled up to Rachel as Rachel was considering two different Tupperwares, neither of them quite the right size for the amount of prawn rice noodles she had to put away.

"Hey, uh, Rachel? Shouldn't you go home now to be with your hot new husband, and like, I dunno, listen to Ed Sheeran while you eat fresh brownies right off the pan with your bare fingers or something?"

Rachel's nose wrinkled up in an exaggerated Confusion Face. She was so gosh dang cute. "Do you think straight couples have like a 2am curfew?"

"No," said Peik Lin defensively, adding in an undertone, "but it would _not_ surprise me."

"Anyways, we are not that straight." 

Peik Lin lifted an eyebrow and adopted what she thought was sort of a Brooklyn accent. "Oh, are you really into making your own jam right now? Are you gonna get a goat for eco-friendly yard work? Are you gonna make like a white drummer and get dreadlocks? Are you gonna do drugs, but in a rich people way? Are you gonna try pegging?" She dropped the act. "Seriously, though, if you get the chance. You probably _should_. I feel like he'd like that."

“You know a lady doesn’t kiss and tell.” Rachel decided on the smaller Tupperware, and automatically Peik Lin lifted the bowl so Rachel could scrape the noodles into the Tupperware more easily.

She kept on talking, too. Housework and ragging on Rachel pretty much went hand in hand. Peik Lin could probably clean her entire dorm room top to bottom with her eyes closed and still hold a full thirty-minute rant about the many reasons why Rachel _should_ let her buy three more dogs, actually. “Does a lady stress eat five lap cheongs in row when she’s trying to write her Game Theory paper? Is that what a lady does? Are you a lady?”

“Whatever. All I’m saying is...” Rachel stopped scraping. The Tupperware was full and yet the bowl was not empty. Peik Lin could actually pinpoint the moment Rachel’s soul left her body. It was so funny, the way Rachel could get genuinely upset at the little things when she’d had a few.

Before Rachel could get into a genuine Tupperware Rage, Peik Lin grabbed a spare pair of chopsticks lying about and just started eating the rest of the noodles in the bowl. They were cold, but they were still good.

“Now you owe me,” she said, through a mouthful. “What were you saying?”

“Lady doesn’t kiss and tell,” Rachel said, real fast, so all the words were smushed together, _ladydoesn’tkissandtell,_ as if speed alone would ward off Peik Lin’s nosiness.

Which of course it wouldn’t. Nothing ever did. “So, like, cross-dressing? That’s fun.”

“No, like.” Rachel’s hands moved in some abstract gesture that made Peik Lin very grateful that the Tupperware in her left hand was tightly closed. “Sometimes, there’s, like. Not just the two of us.”

“Oh, so there’s three of you.” 

Rachel stood back and surveyed the ruins of the buffet table. “Do you think it’s worth boxing up the lo bak go? There’s only one slice left...oh, who am I kidding.”

She reached for it, but Peik Lin was faster, snatching the plate up and dumping its contents into the bowl alongside the prawn noodles. “So there’s more than three of you! Wow, Rachel, I’m proud. Are you guys hitting up the secret Hong Kong orgy circuit? Do you all have to wear fancy masks?”

“No. God.” Rachel took one last look at the buffet table, and, satisfied with her work, picked up a pair of chopsticks and went at the noodles while Peik Lin finished off the lo bak go. 

Peik Lin grinned. Shit they don’t tell you about Cinderella: you can take the starving student out of the dorm room and give her wealth beyond her wildest dreams, but she’ll still automatically eat any leftover free food at hand. (Peik Lin does too, but that’s cause she finds the job of human garburator to be very fulfilling.) She has a lot of fond memories of “accidentally” ordering way too much pork belly and purple sticky rice from a local Hmong restaurant, and then halving it with Rachel, eating out of the same bowl just like this. From the little smile Rachel gave her, Peik Lin could tell that she was having those same memories. Cute, yes, but also a sign Rachel’s defenses were down.

“So,” Peik Lin said, “you and Nick are totally doing it with Colin and Araminta, then. That’s cool, Rachel. Very modern, very chill.”

They locked eyes for a long silent moment, Peik Lin aggressively chewing the last bit of lo bak go way more than was necessary, Rachel slurping one long rice noodle very very slowly. Eventually, Rachel ran out of noodle, and suddenly, they both broke.

“I _knew_ it,” Peik Lin crowed, at the exact same time that Rachel groaned, “How do you _do_ that?”

Cause Araminta dropped lots of hints when she was drunk. “Cause I’m a genius and I know everything there is to know about you.” Full of smug self-satisfaction, Peik Lin grabbed the Tupperware from Rachel’s hands and went to stow it away in the complicated stainless-steel puzzle that was Astrid’s fridge.

“That’s the most you’re gonna know about it, though,” Rachel called after her.

“Because you’re a lady?”

“Because I’m a lady.”

“I know.” Peik Lin finally managed to wedge the Tupperware between a bunch of mangoes and a block of butter. 

Rachel grabbed a lemon-printed apron from a hook on the back of the pantry and started in on the dishes. Peik Lin, in the meantime, hunted for a dishcloth. 

“So the whole thing was just one big opportunity to play Sherlock Holmes,” said Rachel.

“Or, as the children would call it—” Peik Lin posed with one hand under her chin. “A flex.”

Rachel made a face. “I don’t think that’s what a flex is.”

“Which of us is more connected to youth culture, Rachel?”

“Literally neither of us; I’m a married economics professor with no kids and you’re a lifestyle blogger who lives in a gold palace. We’re as disconnected from The Youth as it gets.”

“Speak for yourself.” Peik Lin finally located a whole drawerful of dishcloths and got down to drying. She should’ve known, when Rachel didn’t reply immediately, that something was afoot, but she was so busy trying to catch up with Rachel in the dishes department that she didn’t notice.

“You know what this means, right?” Rachel said, a little while later.

“No,” Peik Lin said, which was true, but she had an inkling that whatever it was, it was bad news for her. Rachel had a disturbingly pleased twinkle in her eye. Peik Lin didn’t trust it.

“You broached the subject of relationships and sex,” said Rachel, in a borderline prim Professor Voice, “and you Gay Best Friended me about my marriage for like at least five minutes, which means that now I get to—”

“No—”

“—I get to Straight Best Friend you for a commensurate amount of time, because the laws of proportionate emotional labor—“

“That’s not what that means,” Peik Lin muttered.

“—basically entitle me to nosy questions about your love life—”

“ _Really_ doesn’t.”

Rachel gestured emphatically with a soapy spatula. “—cause if you know all about mine and I don’t know all about yours, that’s like—”

“Totally normal!”

“—honestly unfair to me, I feel.”

“ _Your_ feelings—”

A third voice, pitched higher than either of theirs, and unquantifiably more graceful, too: “Everything okay in here?”

Astrid was there, silhouetted in the kitchen doorway by soft golden light from the living room beyond. Tendrils of her soft dark hair had escaped their messy bun, and the neck of her oversized blue sweater showed a wide slice of her collarbone, and her lip gloss looked as pink and fresh as if it had just been applied, probably tasted like bubblegum—

“ _Oh,”_ Rachel said.

Without moving a muscle in her face, Peik Lin moved her foot so that her heel was bearing down on Rachel’s toe. “Everything’s fine. We just finished putting away the rest of the food, and the dishes will be done in ten minutes.” She hoped she wasn’t smiling Crazy. She felt like she might be.

If Astrid noticed, she didn’t let on. She just gave them her own smile, sweet as honey, and went to get another dishcloth. Rachel and Peik Lin went back to work. 

“You guys don’t have to do all this,” Astrid said. It was absolutely wild, how much harmony her speaking voice had. “I’m sorry. I always appreciated my cook, of course, but I didn’t realize until the move that it was so much work.”

“It’s totally fine,” Peik Lin said. “I’m used to it. I always do the dishes at home.”

“Oh,” Astrid said, looking mildly surprised, but not displeased.

Why had Peik Lin said that? Such an absolutely useless thing to lie about! While Astrid had her back turned, she shot Rachel a Look, which to which Rachel stuck her tongue out. Did Peik Lin deserve this kind of treatment? Well, kind of. She had tormented Rachel with many an “accidental” meeting with Nick. A particularly memorable escapade involving the YMCA basketball fundraiser and Nick completely shirtless came to mind, and also, Rachel had worried that Nick would think she was stalking him, which she hadn’t been, although Peik Lin totally was. But that had all been a long time ago. Rachel should’ve gotten over it.

Rachel’s phone went _ping._ Taking off the rubber gloves, she squinted at it. “Oh, here we go,” she sighed. “Astrid, can you do me a favor?”

“Anything.”

“Can you take Peik Lin for the night? I was going to drive her home, but Nick’s texting me like crazy. Apparently he got the flight times all mixed up. We were supposed to at the airport half an hour ago. I think we can make it, but only if I leave now.”

A wide variety of revenge fantasies unfolded in Peik Lin’s head, one of them involving a rubber ducky and another involving Rachel’s mother. The former being probably more appropriate than the latter.

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Astrid said. “Cassian has been very firm about boundaries, with the divorce, so I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to take his room, but—”

“Oh,” said Rachel, “so there’s _only one bed?_ Is that what you’re saying?”

Peik Lin nearly broke into Spanish, which was her usual fighting-with-Rachel-in-front-of-Chinese-people move. But then she remembered that Astrid was one of the most accomplished women she’d ever met and therefore probably could pick up on English cognates, if she didn’t already speak Spanish fluently. So she just glared harder instead.

“I’m sure we can work something out,” Astrid said. “If need be, I can drive her myself in a few hours, once the alcohol’s out of my system. If you’re all right with that, of course.” She turned to Peik Lin.

“Of course,” said Peik Lin, in a pronounced Okay, Rachel, You’ll Get Yours kind of a voice. “Can’t have my best friend missing her flight back to work. God knows what those first-year econ bros would do without their syllabus walkthrough. They’d be lost.”

“I’m sorry, I should’ve been more organized about the trip,” said Rachel, who had literally color-coded her planner with three different highlighters. It really was the little indignities that were the worst, like the way that Rachel barely bothered with lying.

“It’s fine,” Peik Lin said. “You better go.”

“See you in spring!” Rachel darted forward to hug Astrid, then hugged Peik Lin, and then was out the door like a fucking ninja. Peik Lin stared after her, feeling like she’d just been unexpectedly robbed or something.

“Cassian’s with his father tonight,” said Astrid. “So it’s just us.”

“Oh,” said Peik Lin carefully.

Astrid, as beautiful and serene as ever, was damn hard to read. “Would you like to watch a movie or something?”

“Yes,” said Peik Lin, also carefully.

“Netflix and chill?” Maybe it was the accent? Maybe the accent was the reason that Peik Lin absolutely could not tell whether Astrid knew what she was saying or not.

“Yes?” said Peik Lin, saying it real slow for Maximum Cautiousness.

“Peik Lin,” Astrid said, just as slowly. She took a couple steps forward and twisted a strand of Peik Lin’s hair around her finger. Suddenly Peik Lin was no longer confused in the least. “Neither you nor Rachel are half as sneaky as you think you are.”

Peik Lin swallowed hard. “My bad.”

“No, it’s cute.” Unexpectedly, Astrid broke out into a smile, nothing demure about it. “You’re cute.”

“Pretty sure that’s the wine talking,” Peik Lin managed to say.

“I don’t think so. But just in case, bring some more wine with you, hm?” With that, Astrid slipped out of the room, as lithe and silent as a cat.

After a second of stunned silence, Peik Lin grabbed a bottle from a nearby shelf at random without looking at the label, and all but ran after her.

As it turned out, the wine was Malbec. The lip gloss was peach. Life was full of fun surprises.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Peach [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24275830) by [blackglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackglass/pseuds/blackglass), [dance4thedead](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dance4thedead/pseuds/dance4thedead), [lunatique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunatique/pseuds/lunatique), [sisi_rambles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisi_rambles/pseuds/sisi_rambles)




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